I keep giving you recipes with green tomato sauce.  Where did that sauce come from?

A few mornings ago I set out to make green tomato relish. However, after much boiling and the addition of cornflour the mix failed to thicken. Sauce was the result.

I remembered that at the back of a cupboard I had a very large jam saucepan which would be perfect.

In preparation, I thought about the ingredients additional to the tomatoes I would choose.

Onions

I had a very large bowl of mostly very large tomatoes.

I planned to season the mix with rock salt and black pepper corns, and flavour it with Allspice and Cloves.  The natural sweeteners would be dried dates and leatherwood honey.

In addition I added eight small cloves of fresh garlic, and a heaped dessertspoon of Sambal Olek (chilli).

I started cooking by sweating the onions in extra virgin olive oil.

Then powdered the Allspice across the softened mass, threw in a reasonable amount of peppercorns and cloves.  I added half a cup of malt vinegar and a quarter of a cup of apple cider vinegar.

As that mixture heated through I chopped the tomatoes coarsely and added them to the pot.   Some, while green on the outside, had interiors which were starting to turn faintly red.

Finally I chopped the five tomatoes which were firmly red.

Last to be added to the pot were the chopped dates.

Stirred the ingredients together.

I cooked the mix and then I cooked it more but it failed to thicken. Sauce it had to be!  So I dragged out the blender.

I was determined to recycle jars with lids; the sterilising clean left their glass glistening. The result was pots full of a rich green/brown liquid, and a house smelling sweet and savoury.